Trump has unveiled an agenda of his own. He just doesn’t mention it much.

[cigaretteman]

Donald Trump has never been a policy wonk — a statement that might someday be offered its own wing in the Museum of Obviousness. This is in part because Trump’s interest in politics is about the power that it offers far more than the influence that power can wield. It is also in part because Trump prefers uncertainty to certainty and flexibility to expectation-setting.


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When he arrived at the Iowa State Fair in the summer of 2015, a reporter asked him when he was going to release policy proposals, something presidential candidates usually did. Trump shrugged, arguing that detailing desired outcomes was a disadvantage in negotiations. And, besides, no voters were worried about it.
“I know the press wants it,” he said. “I don’t think the people care. I think they trust me.”

That was generally true, both for Trump and for everyone else. But it has become less true over time, as Trump has demonstrated that he intends to use the power of the presidency in unorthodox ways — including ones that threaten the stability of the economy and government itself. Because there is more concern over what Trump plans to do, there is also more demand to understand what his plans are.


The most detailed articulation of what a second Trump term would look like was cobbled together by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Called “Project 2025,” it is a book-length presentation of a sweeping overhaul of government and governance. It is also, in the current view of the Trump campaign, an annoyance: It gives Trump’s opponents something to point to and elevate to voters as unacceptable, even though it isn’t actually offered by Trump himself.
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But Trump himself has presented a scattershot set of policy proposals. Dubbed “Agenda 47,” Trump’s plans should he return to the White House are documented by his campaign website, each proposal accompanied by a video in which Trump delineates its components. Very few people discuss the elements of Agenda 47, Trump himself very much included. That’s largely because they were created for and targeted at the Republican presidential primaries, not his actual bid to unseat President Biden.

The first video, titled “Free Speech Policy Initiative,” was published on Dec. 15, 2022. This was shortly after he announced his candidacy — and at a time when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) appeared to be a significant threat to his renomination. DeSantis had spent several years filling the partial vacuum created by Trump’s departure from office by throwing out proposals and policies targeting a right-wing audience. The Dec. 15 video initiated an effort to catch up.


The proposal was mostly right-wing rhetoric salient to the moment that was crammed into a policy-type offering.
“In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep-state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people,” Trump claims. “The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed,” he later insists, “and it must happen immediately.”

And so on.

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Search Trump’s ‘Agenda 47’ videos​

The tool below allows you to search the transcripts of Trump’s policy videos for particular terms. The titles of each proposal are linked to Trump’s campaign website.

Enter a search term:

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/18/trump-has-unveiled-an-agenda-his-own-he-just-doesnt-mention-it-much/

 

[cigaretteman]

Over the next 2½ months, Trump’s campaign released 15 more videos, targeting subjects including immigration and crime. The videos were often responsive to the moment, such as his video from late January 2023 insisting that Republicans protect Medicare and Social Security. He similarly pledged in videos to stop “the left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children” and to “clean house of all of the warmongers and America-last globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the national security industrial complex.”



Perhaps the most obvious demonstration that “Agenda 47” is focused on the Republican base comes from his video on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a celebration that will occur in 2026.
He would put together a task force on the first day of his administration, he said, and center the celebration on a national fair. And he already had a location in mind.
“My hope is that the amazing people of Iowa will work with my administration to open up the legendary Iowa state fairgrounds to host the Great American State Fair,” he said, “and welcome millions and millions of visitors from around the world to the heartland of America for this special one-time festival.”

The Trump campaign made his proposals more formal over time, fleshing out the pages with bullet-pointed explanations of the specifics. But by mid-April 2023, Trump had pulled away from the rest of the Republican primary field and the pace of new “Agenda 47” proposals slowed. The campaign hasn’t published a new one since December.


What’s there, though, includes a number of stark promises should he return to office and a number of dubious claims.
A video titled “Addressing Rise of Chronic Childhood Illnesses,” for example, raises alarm over “a stunning rise in autism, auto-immune disorders, obesity, infertility, serious allergies, and respiratory challenges.” He pledges to start a presidential commission to look at the issue, one not beholden to “Big Pharma.” After all, when speculating about the shift, he muses that perhaps it is due to “over-prescription of certain medications.”

In another video, he proposes a new, free public university — offered in November in response to protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments,” he says, “and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy.”


Rest assured, he says, the Academy “will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed.”
There were some classics from his past presidential bids as well, like a defense of suburbia included in a March 2023 video.
“Joe Biden recently announced that he will require every state, county, city, and town to submit so-called equity plans,” he said, “to impose the Left’s Marxist housing agenda on your communities.” He added that “the woke left is waging full scale war on the suburbs, and their Marxist crusade is coming for your neighborhood, your tax dollars, your public safety, and your home.”

(The word “woke” appears frequently in the “Agenda 47” videos. In one, Trump informs viewers, “The woke left is bad news. They destroy countries.”)
This, according to Trump’s own website, is his agenda: a pastiche of promises and rhetoric that centers heavily on the things Republican primary voters wanted to hear in 2023. Because of that, more recent points of focus and more recent promises aren’t included. There are no mentions of bitcoin in the videos, for example, nor of reducing the corporate tax rate. Visitors to his site would not know that either issue is part of his agenda. None of his “Agenda 47” videos include any mention of abortion.
At times, though, his pitch to voters is direct. Consider the culmination of a video focused on home-schooling (which he calls a “courageous choice” for parents).
“Do not vote Democrat. Do not vote for Crooked Joe,” Trump says. “Vote for Honest Donald.”
That is probably the best distillation of Trump’s agenda.